YUGOSLAVIA: Pigs to Books

The Karageorgevitch dynasty went down for the third time last week; it was the second time Russia’s hand helped push it under.

Down Once. Black George, founder of the line, left his swineherd’s hut to become the scourge of Serbia’s Turkish masters. He was a choleric, heroic breeder of pigs and rebellion. He loved corn pone, plum brandy and killing (with his own hands he slew 125 men who provoked his anger; he stabbed his stepfather, hanged his brother).

But Serbia’s big brother, Russia, intrigued against Serbia’s new ruler. In 1817 Black George was murdered while asleep in a cave, his head sent as a trophy to Constantinople.

Down Twice. Black George’s son, Alexander, staged a comeback in 1842, steered a fitful course through Turkish, Austrian and Russian intrigue. For 16 years he was lucky. Then, after barely escaping assassination, he was deposed.

Black George’s grandson, Peter, a quiet, aging (60) exile in Switzerland, was summoned to the throne in 1903. He led Serbia through the two Balkan wars and World War I.

Down Thrice. Peter’s second son became the dogmatic, determined state-maker, Alexander I, first king of the Yugoslavs. In his youth, while a student at St. Petersburg, he fell in love with Tatiana, one of the Czar’s daughters, who, along with her parents, was murdered by the Bolsheviks at Ekaterinburg. All his life Alexander was obsessed by fear and hatred of the Red Russians; they called Yugoslavia “the graveyard of Communists.” When Alexander was assassinated at Marseilles in 1934, his son Peter, a shy, eleven-year-old who dreamed of being a radio mechanic, wept: “But I don’t want to be a king.”

By last week Peter II, now 22, wanted very much to remain a king. But Russia’s friend, Marshal Tito, had his recently elected Skupshtina (national assembly) declare the Karageorgevitch dynasty ended. Yugoslavia was now a republic.

In London Black George’s scion said he would expose Tito by writing a book.